Mobile devices include applications, such as web browsers, that can request content from content providers, such as website servers. Content providers can enable advertisement providers to supplement the requested content with advertisements. In general, advertisement providers pay higher prices for advertisements that reach specific intended audiences because targeted advertisements increase the chances of favorable responses to the advertisement.
For example, an advertisement provider designs a football-related advertisement for mobile device users attending a football game played in a football stadium. The mobile device users attending the football game are likely to have sufficient interest and sufficient disposable income to respond favorably to the advertisement, based on the expensive ticket prices for the football game. However, the advertiser provider does not want to pay higher prices to send this advertisement to numerous mobile device users who are not attending the football games, for these mobile device users are not as likely to have sufficient interest and sufficient disposable income to respond favorably to the advertisement. Therefore, advertisement providers would only want to pay for sending such advertisements to targeted mobile device users. Targeted advertisements require the geographic locations of mobile devices to be identified. But advertisement providers have problems with targeted advertisements based on the geographic locations of mobile devices.
For example, if a mobile phone user activates a web browser to request news content from a news website server, the website server may have a limited amount of time to request an advertisement from an advertisement provider. The advertisement provider may not have time to request the mobile phone to identify the location of the mobile phone, to receive the identified location of the mobile phone, to process the received location of the mobile phone, to select a advertisement for a specific intended audience based on the processed location, and to convey this selected advertisement to the content provider.